THE POLITICAL VIRGIN

by Viola Ilma ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

When, in 1950, Viola Ilma wrote to 1000 notable people asking for $10 from each to finance her trip to Europe, one of the 1000 -- the editor of The Ladies Home Journal, wrote back ""I'm glad I haven't got your nerve in my tooth"". The brash, breezy Viola, with nerve and verve, the granddaughter of a Swiss missionary to Ethiopia, the daughter of New York musicians, chalks up, in this autobiography-to-date, an extraordinary list of schemes and happenstances: in 1927, when she was 18, Julian Huxley sent her roses and wrote her a sonnet, (she threw the roses in a sink); during the Depression she started the conservatively radical magazine Modern Youth, (which folded after 4 issues); she organized the First American Youth Congress, (in which the Communists outmaneuvered her and stole the show); the Communists attacked her as a Fascist, the Fascists distrusted her left-wing leanings, later in 1950, the State Department revoked her passport, (it was reinstated); she married first a Comunist, then the president of a New York meat cutters' local, discarded both; roomed with Marguerite Higgins; chatted with Eleanor Roosevelt; began a foundation for delinquent children; and is now in the process of initiating public works publicity in Ethiopia. An incredible name-dropping record, mainly people from whom she was seeking advice or money, usually both. When Viola graduated from Julia Richmond High School in New York, she was voted ""the typical American high school girl"". Too much?

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Duell, Sloan & Pearce

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1958

Categories: NONFICTION